Enlightenment
by Johnathan-117
Summary: Another journal entry by John117... regarding the lot of the SPARTANs. Strange one shot. Read and review.


** Private Journal  
Log in: Orphan  
Password:  
Access Granted  
New Entry **

Let me tell you a story.

That once upon a time, the world was malformed, diseased – eaten alive with the cancer called mankind, feeding and growing on the desire to rage against conformity, festering with the infection called politics. Crippled by differences of opinion.

This diseased, festering, dying society, was ruled by a pantheon of men who styled themselves as gods, who called themselves glorious names, like Senator, Admiral, Director… They ruled circles of lies that masqueraded as heavenly shrines to sanity and order, with names like United Nations, and Office of Naval Intelligence.

This pantheon directed the cancer called mankind with one iron fist and an artist's brush clamped tight in the other hand. The artist's brush to hide the disease from the eyes of the cancer, to make it believe that there was more to consume, to make it believe that it wasn't killing itself every day, consuming the rot, consuming the infection… and the iron first was used to keep all eyes reigned in and trained in the right direction.

It was of humble birth, anonymity, that a new deity emerged from amidst the fetid, cancerous masses.

She paid no homage to the pantheon, this new goddess, nor their lies. Before her gaze, the veil was lifted, and she saw what no other before her had ever seen…

A cure.

A way to counteract the disease, remove it and rehabilitate the infected tissues that ate away at the fabric of society… Chemotherapy for mankind, penicillin for free will…

And all she needed, brother, was a little of your time, your money…

… and enough expendable followers to ensure the coming of a new age, her New World Order.

First came her saint.

A man whose life had been dedicated to serving the pantheon; used, abused, disillusioned by what he saw. A fallen angel slowly succumbing to the disease of the world around him, his grace tarnished, his halo long since bent and cast aside for the material trappings of weapons – incense and icons replaced by gun oil and cold steel.

She came to him with an offer, redemption in the form of material compensation… Promises of a world forged anew, reborn and reshaped in the flames of secret, cleansing fires. Promises of power, of the fulfillment of his dreams and deepest desires…

And above all, a chance to shape history… The chance denied to him when the pantheon turned it's back on him.

The fallen angel said yes, and in turn became a Saint.

The Goddess showed herself, then, to the pantheon – humbled herself before them so that her radiance would shine all the more. Let them be shamed by her brilliance, her vision… let them be cowed by her perfection, let them quiver at the thought that she could see victory where all they could see was the inevitability of defeat…

The Goddess offered them salvation – the sweet seduction of power…

Sometimes, gods are only men.

And men are weak.

To entice a man to eat from the palm of her hand, the Goddess had to only promise power. Glory. A new age…

All you must do, she told them, is give me what I want…

And in the end, all the god-men agreed…

It was so little to ask, in exchange for the chance to change the world.

And that left us.

The chosen sons and daughters of the Goddess Halsey.

Seventy-five candidates for late-term abortion. Seventy-five lives ended before they ever began, freedom of choice stolen from us before we even knew what the word meant.

And when Saint Mendez spoke, we listened, blindly followed his every word, his every decree… in hopes of…?

What?

Martyrdom.

Immortality.

Honorable death.

Concepts fed to us through propaganda reels, through stories of wolves in the winter, the ancient battle of Thermopylae. Each of us, acolytes seeking enlightenment, seeking to rise above the rank and file, in hopes that something more lay just beyond the horizon of our consciousness… That there was something more, something magical in that great place called outside, the World… Civilization.

Each of us working to enter a world of pain and suffering, each of us giving up freedom, thought, choice… slaves to a cruel goddess, hanging on every word spoken by her sainted Voice…

To sacrifice everything was, we thought, what we must do to gain the freedom to choose.

The acolytes lived a life of battle – warrior-priests for a cause they didn't understand nor chose for themselves… Their lives wasted, their bodies broken and mended, reformed a thousand times again and again… and always, always, eyes blinded with innocence turned towards enlightenment… Each seeking to break through the glass walls of the world to the sparkling stars of eternity that lurked just out of reach…

Like so many, of course… our cult of personality was a lie. A sham.

But by the time the fake gilding and glass jewels lost their luster, by the time the lies and illusions woven by the whore-goddess and her disciple had at last become translucent, as see-through as gossamer, it was too late.

The pantheon could rage all it wanted, but to take action against the goddess, would be to admit their own culpability, to admit to the masses that they were but men. That they were not in control.

The cancer was never cured.

It simply went into remission.

The acolytes waged a holy war, on two fronts, in the name of the Goddess, the Saint, and the Pantheon – sacrificing, as they were taught, everything in hopes of one day breaking through the glass ceiling to the glittering stars above…

In the end, only one acolyte ever succeeded.

Only one fought, through blood and tears, through heartache and pain…

Until the day his hands met the glass, and he surged forward, through it…

And on that day, when the acolyte gained enlightenment, he learned the terrible truths of the world. With great knowledge, there always comes an even greater price.

There were no stars.

The goddess was a whore, a mad woman, insane and twisted beyond imagination.

The saint, a pederast, a murderer, the concept of a child abuser multiplied ten-thousand fold.

Its funny how all religions are the same, when you strip away the shiny trappings and the glow cast by innocent eyes.

They're all a lie.

** End Entry **

** End Session **


End file.
